Image by Robert Owen-Wahl from Pixabay.
Or, the scientists believed that estrous makes female mice erratic and so the results of experiments would be “messy.”
A new study turns these suppositions on their heads. Estrous has very little effect on the behavior of female mice; male mice are actually “more erratic.” The study caused an uproar in the scientific community (whatever that is) as the research also indicated the drastic results of this female exclusion. We’ve come a long way from the days when a woman’s period was supposed to make her nearly insane, but of course as always the scientists are trailing behind. It was women’s actual experience that very slowly changed society’s attitude about “the curse.” And mice have no way of explaining their behavior.
It’s not only mice. Until 1990, women were barred from clinical trials, ignoring the fact that we respond differently to many drugs than do men; we are more than twice as likely to have severe reactions. Dosages are usually based on the different body sizes and metabolism of men, and it even seems that many often-prescribed drugs do little or nothing for women.
In 1993, the National Institute of Health began to require studies it funded to include women but we still lag behind in tests for cardiovascular disease and psychiatric disorders. This is especially troubling because we exhibit different symptoms of heart attacks, and as has been clear at least since the publication of “The Yellow Wallpaper,” treatments (so called) for psychiatric disorders have often caused more harm than good, especially during the decades when female unhappiness because of social conditions was treated like a mental disease.
Well, we do move forward, though only very slowly and only a little at a time. And we women still need to be wary of the old-time doctors and old-time hospitals that have often misdiagnosed and mistreated us—partly because of a lack of scientific studies.
Phyllis Chesler kindly gave me permission to share her recent piece on the Academy Awards, originally published in the New English Review. Phyllis Chesler is an Emerita Professor of Psychology, the author of 20 books, including Women and Madness (1972), An American Bride in Kabul, and Requiem For a Female Serial Killer (2020).
What Rough Beast?
Phyllis Chesler
Have I grown “too long in the tooth,” become unfashionably old-fashioned? Have I finally lost my radical edge and become—oh dear God—a boring traditional? Do I belong to an era that’s well on its way out, to a time long gone by? Am I—of all people—suddenly prudish?
I. Am. Not. And yet I, am mortally, mightily, offended, even shamed by all the beautiful actresses on stage and on the Red Carpet at the Academy Awards wearing haute couture in which their perfected breasts are half-bared and with skirts slitted right up to their hips. I mourn the loss of less-is-more, the glamour, style, and dignity of yore.
Therefore, I salute Cate Blanchett, (Louie Vuitton) Jamie Lee Curtis, (Dolce & Gabbana), Michelle Yeoh (Dior), Michelle Williams (Chanel), Stephanie Hsu (Valentino), Andrea Riseborough (Alexander McQueen), and Malala Yousafzai (Ralph Lauren) for their silky, sparkling dresses which dared leave something to the imagination.
This view of mine is only seemingly contradictory given my position on niqab and the burqa, even on hijab, now that women in Iran and Afghanistan are risking beatings, prison, and death for demanding the right not to be forced into covering their hair. However, while one might oppose the burqa, one need not necessarily embrace nearly bare-breasted female singers and actresses, crawling around on the floor like savage animals, imitating orgies with the Devil.
None of the male actors, musicians, producers, editors, screenwriters, or sound effect mavens at the Academy Awards bared any part of their private parts. Most wore suits and tuxedos. A very few wore shirts open to their mid-chests but there was nothing seductive or eye-catching about it, nothing “provocative” to see there.
Such half-naked dressing is a dreadful form of appeasement, a dangerous, terrified conformity. Pre- adolescent and adolescent girls copy this style. They are soon prey for perverts. Music videos celebrate writhing, half naked women, almost bare-breasted, almost bare-assed—and they’re famous, presumably wealthy, they’re the new role models for the masses.
Have we truly entered a new kind of barbarism, birthed a terrible Second Coming? If so, as the great Irish poet once wrote:
“And what rough beast, its hour come round at/last,/Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
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